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Time to Stand up for Tribeca's Historic Districts

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Time to Stand up for Tribeca's Historic Districts Time to stand up for Tribeca’s Historic Districts http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=c5edb5147ca6110dc668... Subscribe Share Past Issues Translate What you can do to help Tribeca's historic districts now. View this email in your browser Dear Neighbor, 1. Tribeca Trust submitted a extensively researched request to the Landmarks Preservation Commission for expansion of the boundaries of Tribeca’s historic districts on July 31st. It contained a five-page letter to the Chair of LPC outlining why expansion is essential to protect Tribeca in the future. That letter is copied here in this newsletter at the end of these news items. The map of the new boundaries is also with this newsletter. You can also see the map at www.tribecatrust.org 2. Tragedies like the glass tower under construction at 56 Leonard (the “Jenga” building) happen because Tribeca’s four historic districts were too small to begin with as well as heavily gerrymandered. The community originally requested a larger, contiguous area. Over time, inappropriate development (eg: 88 Leonard, 1 York, the 1 of 9 12/4/13, 6:03 PM Time to stand up for Tribeca’s Historic Districts http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=c5edb5147ca6110dc668... Subscribe Share Past Issues Translate “Truffles” building, etc) has eroded Tribeca’s sense of place at every one of our historic district boundaries. The best solution is expansion of those boundaries. A second-best solution is a new kind of zoning at our borders. We are pursuing both options. 3. Now is the time for all of us to stand up for our historic districts. If we don’t get Landmarks to expand these districts, it will be too late in the future: we risk being surrounded by glass curtain-wall architecture and over-scaled structures that destroy our distinctive Tribeca character, our light, and our air. 4. Do your part: write the Landmarks Preservation Commission to support our request for Tribeca’s historic district expansion. Tell them who you are, where you live, why you love Tribeca, and why you think expansion of our boundaries is essential. Copy your letter to us. Write to Chair Robert Tierney, Landmarks Preservation Commission, Municipal Building, 1 Centre Street, 9th Floor, NYC 10013. You can email them at this link: http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/html/contact /email.shtml 5. Do your part: if LPC pays attention and we are “calendared,” – that is, scheduled for a hearing – we will let you know the date, time and location. Bring your pitchfork and your voice and your neighbors. If we are not calendared in this administration, we will push again in the next one. 6. Do your part: contact us at [email protected] to give some time to our letter-of-support-campaign that we will wage this fall. 7. Do your part: give us a tax-deductible contribution at www.tribecatrust.org using the Paypal link there. We need about $20,000 this year to re-print the book Texture of Tribeca and to hire a zoning expert and a preservation research specialist. 8. Other news: Our application (joint with New York Law School and New York Academy of Art) to participate in the Department of Transportation’s plaza enhancement program was submitted at the end of July. Our application is for the area around Finn Square. If they approve the application, we will begin a process with DOT to come up with a design plan. Alessandra Galletti is leading this project. Contact her at [email protected] with questions or offers of support. 2 of 9 12/4/13, 6:03 PM Time to stand up for Tribeca’s Historic Districts http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=c5edb5147ca6110dc668... Subscribe Share Past Issues Translate That’s all for now. The next newsletter will announce our next meeting to work on these various projects. I will also pass on the information circulating about the Real Estate Board of New York’s recent attacks on historic districts. Sincerley, Lynn Ellsworth Chair, Tribeca Trust [email protected] 917-363-5620 Box 1180 Canal Street Station, NYC 10013 TEXT OF LETTER SENT TO LPC JULY 31 Robert Tierney Chair, Landmarks Preservation Commission 1 Centre Street, 9th Floor New York, NY 10007 Dear Chair Tierney, Attached is a request for evaluation for an extension of Tribeca’s historic districts, to follow the boundaries on the attached map. Tribeca Trust asks to calendar this historic district extension to Tribeca now. These areas are without doubt part of Tribeca. They were part of the community’s original request in 1988, prepared with the counsel of the architectural historian Andrew Dolkart. Accordingly, most of the research on the individual buildings has already been done, so the LPC can act quickly. The proposed extension would go south of Chambers to end along the north side of 3 of 9 12/4/13, 6:03 PM Time to stand up for Tribeca’s Historic Districts http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=c5edb5147ca6110dc668... Subscribe Share Past Issues Translate Park Place, west to Washington Street, and North to Canal Street. Below Chambers it would go east to Broadway. In Tribeca North it would include the blocks at Centre Street and Lafayette Streets where there are many distinguished palazzi. Every leading preservation group in the city came out in favor of an expansive designation for Tribeca back in 1988 and again in 1993 when the issue arose a second time. Yet the result was that four much smaller, gerrymandered historic districts were granted. After much struggle, a tiny extension in Tribeca south was further granted in 2002, but it literally cuts the affected blocks in half. The consequences of this kind of gerrymandering are now clear, and they are terrible. They threaten the sense of place even in the designated historic districts. This is because undesignated lots reach deep into the geographic heart of Tribeca’s historic districts. A case in point is the 80-story glass tower rising up at 56 Leonard Street. It is on the site of small parking lot between Tribeca East and Tribeca West historic districts. It goes up on what had been the former site of the original Mother AME Zion Baptist Church. While this site may have seemed inconsequential in 1988, it now is a call for action: the zigzagging boundaries of Tribeca’s four historic districts obviously present an imminent threat and a grave problem to one of New York’s greatest cultural and historic assets. This is a problem the LPC can easily and quickly fix. The request is simple. Make Tribeca whole. The facts are: · Only the Landmarks Preservation Commission can provide the protection Tribeca needs. The administrative code of the City of New York that lays out the Landmarks law declares that it is a matter of public policy to protect and perpetuate areas of historical or aesthetic interest and that moreover, it “is a public necessity and is required in the interest of the health, prosperity, safety, and welfare of the people.”[1] · There has been widespread support for designation of this area for three decades. The Tribeca community in all its organizational forms has supported it, as well every city council member from our district. The latter group includes our present Councilmember. As a community board member she submitted moving 4 of 9 12/4/13, 6:03 PM Time to stand up for Tribeca’s Historic Districts http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=c5edb5147ca6110dc668... Subscribe Share Past Issues Translate testimony in favor of expansive designation. This collected testimony and that of dozens of historians, architects, residents, and preservation groups is archived and in your files. If you would like copies we would be happy to provide them. · The noted architect and historian Robert Stern wrote in favor of expansive designation in Tribeca to the LPC in 1988 with these words: “Is broadly defined area designation preferable to scattered individual designation? In the case of Tribeca, I think the answer is clearly yes; as in other great New York neighborhoods, the total is far more than the sum of its parts. Even the most masterful urban buildings are not isolated icons, but part and parcel of the larger matrix….if the entire area’s architecture and urbanism are not legally protected, we risk losing not only individual, aesthetically significant buildings but a vivid record…of an important phase in the city’s rise as a world economic power.”[2] Those risks are now coming to pass and must be dealt with. · The designation boundaries of the four smaller Tribeca historic districts represented unequivocal gerrymandering. They were obvious bones thrown to the real estate industry. Back in the early 1980s they advocated a vision of “Wall Street North,” since discredited and even reversed, as parts of the financial district become residential. The Wall Street North idea would demolish buildings south of Chambers in favor of skyscrapers, and West Street would be transformed into a wall of high rises blocking Tribeca from its historic connection to the river. Moreover, at what must have been a last-minute policy move, anything that looked like a parking lot was left out of the newly designated districts. These were ill-conceived ideas and bad discretionary policies that have had tragic consequences. The borders they created have meant too little protection for Tribeca’s architectural and historic fabric. In boom economic times, they have resulted in opening our neighborhood to violent architectural assault by real estate developers: in the past decade grossly inappropriate buildings have sprung up at 1 York Street; 281 Broadway; 88 Leonard Street, 5 Franklin Street; 34 Desbrosses; and 475 Greenwich Street.
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